Happy Shivaratri!

The Zombienet

This week's news :

1. Facebook buys Whatsapp for US $ 19 billion.

2. Google glass is now available for prescription wearers, along with a few etiquette tips.

3. The Mobile World Congress 2014 Barcelona has announced what is my next mobile phone.

There, you have it -my weekly headlines summary, which completely bypasses the world of humans, with its Modis, Paswans, and Lalus. We don't interact with or inhabit the same world as those people who want to now go and live in London since Amma is releasing them from life imprisonment in jails that they entered in 1991 or so, soon after having blown off the head of Indian politics at Sriperambadur ( where is it dear? Look up in Google Earth, lazy!)

 Yes, that was the prehistoric year when there was no Internet, no mobile phone, and no PC.

What!? You mean there was a time on earth when there were humans, that is those who were not robots hobbling around clutching little shiny lighted screens!? Yes. A different time. A different world. A different species.

So human history can be written briefly as the progression of creatures in this sequence: 

Worms

Dinosaurs

Humans

Viruses

Androids.

The last named is you and me, what the dictionary defines as an automaton in the form of a human being. Another name for android.

In the new language of the zombienet we all androids inhabit, there are surprising parallels to humans'. 

Let me list six most powerful words of them:

Breathe = Facebook

Smile = Emoji

Walk or stroll or travel = Browse

Speak = Whatsapp

Unburden your soul = Post on your FB timeline.

Sleep or wake up = Come online or go offline.

In the Zombienet, man's propensity to happiness, sadness, war, disease and death have all equivalents. The Android can suffer or experience an extremely wide range of unpredictable mental states. As recently reported, these vulnerabilities are best exemplified by the issues caused by a bug in the IOS 6.1.1 due to possibilities of rogue access to your devices using the encryption vulnerabilities in SSL. A fix is coming shortly as 7.0.6. Such issues don't always hurt us folks in Zombienet of course. Some of us use KitKat, you see. Even Nokia X uses a stripped version of this OS.

But the worst news?!?!? We may have to go backwards in time and technology, into a world of the spoken language that humans used. That's because some of the folks who shared in the 19 billion loot have decided to offer voice telephony for free on Whatsapp. Yes. Speech. 

Pamban Bridge

Pamban Bridge turns 100

"Death" in Bhagavadgita Chapter 2

The Chapter 2 of the Gita is titled Sankhya Yoga. It has 72 verses and condenses the entire teaching of the Gita.
It is interesting to see how Krishna answers Arjuna's pitiful cry for advice, caught as Arjuna is in the dilemma of fighting a bloody war to death with his own brethren, elders and teachers. Krishna first dismisses his despondency and confusion in the face of a war which had  been in the making all along, between the warrior cousins, on a matter of right and righteousness. He also cautions Arjuna that for a warrior, dereliction of duty in battle will incur ignominy and ridicule. He also says that this war has been inescapable and inevitable due to the build-up of issues. The epic is titled Mahabharata because it symbolises the war to end all wars in India's history.

Nevertheless, the following words of Krishna take the discussion to a different level altogether. It discusses the essential immortality of the soul and how birth, death and killing are superficial, transient events on the eternal canvas of creation. His words are vital to our understanding of the core of Indian philosophical belief.

I quote Sir Edwin Arnold's translation in verse form of the Bhagavad Gita:

KRISHNA
Thou grievest where no grief should be! thou speak'st
Words lacking wisdom! for the wise in heart
Mourn not for those that live, nor those that die.
Nor I, nor thou, nor any one of these,
Ever was not, nor ever will not be,
For ever and for ever afterwards.
All, that doth live, lives always! To man's frame
As there come infancy and youth and age,
So come there raisings-up and layings-down
Of other and of other life-abodes,
Which the wise know, and fear not. This that irks--
Thy sense-life, thrilling to the elements--
Bringing thee heat and cold, sorrows and joys,
'Tis brief and mutable! Bear with it, Prince!
As the wise bear. The soul which is not moved,
The soul that with a strong and constant calm
Takes sorrow and takes joy indifferently,
Lives in the life undying! 

That which is
Can never cease to be; that which is not
Will not exist. To see this truth of both
Is theirs who part essence from accident,
Substance from shadow. Indestructible,
Learn thou! the Life is, spreading life through all;
It cannot anywhere, by any means,
Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed.
But for these fleeting frames which it informs
With spirit deathless, endless, infinite,
They perish. Let them perish, Prince! and fight!
He who shall say, "Lo! I have slain a man!"
He who shall think, "Lo! I am slain!" those both
Know naught! Life cannot slay. Life is not slain!
Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!

Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!
Who knoweth it exhaustless, self-sustained,
Immortal, indestructible,--shall such
Say, "I have killed a man, or caused to kill?"
Nay, but as when one layeth
His worn-out robes away,
And taking new ones, sayeth,
"These will I wear to-day!"
So putteth by the spirit
Lightly its garb of flesh,
And passeth to inherit
A residence afresh.

I say to thee weapons reach not the Life;
Flame burns it not, waters cannot o'erwhelm,
Nor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,
Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,
Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure,
Invisible, ineffable, by word
And thought uncompassed, ever all itself,
Thus is the Soul declared! How wilt thou, then,--
Knowing it so,--grieve when thou shouldst not grieve?
How, if thou hearest that the man new-dead
Is, like the man new-born, still living man--
One same, existent Spirit--wilt thou weep?

The end of birth is death; the end of death
Is birth: this is ordained! and mournest thou,
Chief of the stalwart arm! for what befalls
Which could not otherwise befall? The birth
Of living things comes unperceived; the death
Comes unperceived; between them, beings perceive:
What is there sorrowful herein, dear Prince?

Wonderful, wistful, to contemplate!
Difficult, doubtful, to speak upon!
Strange and great for tongue to relate,
Mystical hearing for every one!
Nor wotteth man this, what a marvel it is,
When seeing, and saying, and hearing are done!
This Life within all living things, my Prince!
Hides beyond harm; scorn thou to suffer, then,
For that which cannot suffer. Do thy part!

These words describe all aspects of death. It is a transition. It is not touching the soul.  The key verses in Sanskrit are the ones which state how the embodied soul merely transitions at death. And that Arjuna has to do his duty at hand, recognising the inevitablity of death for all that is born.

This philosophical concept, as Krishna says, is hard to understand, and most only marvel at it. Therefore the goal is to shift one's focus from death and lead one's life in an aware manner. That means not that we have to do different things, but do things everyday differently. That attitude of awareness and equanimity is discussed in the last several verses of this chapter, from the description of a Sthitaprajna's attitude to life.

 (Photo: Oct. 2013 Pamban Bridge Rameshwaram.)

Decoding the Indian Headshake

Important for all aspirants wishing to max in

IAS IPS IFS IRS SAT JEE GMAT GRE TOEFL etc. etc. 

Click the picture below to watch the video lesson! 

Why Hinduism is never in danger

Wendy Doniger's book's "pulping" by Penguin, recent talks by Rajiv Malhotra on Indra's Net, and the various protestations in all media by big and small names about freedom of expression, all  raises a fundamental question.

Is Hinduism in danger? 

I don't think so at all. Let me list ten reasons for my thinking.

1. Hinduism is a broad expression applied to variegated beliefs and practices of >1 billion people, with millions of temples, hundred of rituals, thousands of years of monuments and temples, and several thousand-years old scriptures unparalleled in human history. Such a large living organism, for want of a better expression, can never be threatened by any time-bound or space-confined efforts of anyone. If mankind is wiped out by a nuclear holocaust, Hinduism will also perhaps disappear. Only to rise again if ever thinking life reappears.
2. Hinduism is not a doctrine. It is not a book. It is not a "Ten Commandments"or a "Quran". It works itself into your being from before your birth, through the most natural inputs of touch, sound, sight, song, food, language, social relationships, and is celebrated year-long everywhere. Hinduism works because it makes you feel alive and good. It cannot be threatened therefore even by death. In fact, birth, death, marriage, schooling, parents, children, everything around us is Hinduism's raw material. It derives strength from everything that happens!
3. Science supports Hinduism. We don't say God made the world in seven days, the sun goes round the earth, and if you pray five times a day, you go to a heaven with rivers of wine and erotica. Every scientific discovery and invention, be it bosons, black hole or in vitro fertilization, fits nicely with some Hindu legend or myth. Why? Because the Hindus have been intelligent men thinking over millennia about life and creation, and are the best natural scientists.
4. Ecology supports Hinduism. When doctors tell you to go vegetarian, or governments tell you to go easy on the gas pedal, they are simply emphasizing the virtues of "Sattvic" nature that is defined in Hinduism 5000 years ago. Period. Buddha called it the middle path.
5. What makes people happy? Music. Dance. Celebration. All this is intrinsic to HInduism's everyday life. This is a big deal in this world, where religions ban music and dance and women are in black purdah. men are told sex is the original sin. So you have weirdos who do crazy things out of confusion and frustration. No such problem for Hinduism.
6. Hinduism has humour. We have stories of great humour. Ganesha, Hanuman, Krishna, are all fun people. Shiva, Rama, and Karttikeya are brave, far-thinking, leaders. All our gods are simply the best role models.
7. Female emancipation is not a tough question in Hinduism. We call Earth our mother and along with Prosperity she makes up the two consorts of God=Vishnu. So we give a natural place for life in our religion, and raise it to motherhood. We also see a lot of evil of all kinds around. To cleanse it, we invoke the goddess Durga or Devi or Kali. There cannot be greater positivism in problem solving. In fact neo-management gurus routinely quote our legends and myths for illustration. 
8. There is no conflict in Hinduism between wealth and goodness. We have held out as our heroes prosperous and benevolent and extremely mature kings who treat their wealth as a trust for the development of all mankind.
9. There is no conflict in Hinduism between individualism and inclusiveness. Whereas we are extolled to seek our individual liberation or Moksha, we are told that the way for this is through doing socially good action ( =loka sangraha in Bhagavadgita). Bhagavadgita can be called the greatest book of human psychology!
10. We don't mind funny people or funny comments or crazy books about Hinduism. When Keshab Chandra Sen talked to Sri Ramakrishna for three days about why there is no God, Ramakrishna applauded him and said he was wonderful. Keshab asked, "so do you accept there is no God?" Ramakrishna laughed and said, "no, dear Keshab, in fact I am now more than convinced that only God could have made possible such a brilliant debater like you!" So for every Wendy Doniger, there will be a Rajiv Malhotra. You see, we believe in the hierarchy of evolution. From fish, boar and tortoise, incarnations evolve, and finally you have the greatest avatar. Similarly, you have animal/bestial thinkers, idol worshippers, Freudians, cruel and violent and confused people, and finally also a Mahatma Gandhi. When someone shot him point blank in his own prayer meeting, he said "Hey Ram"and died. 

Postscript: suppose I study Hinduism in its myriad forms, scriptures, legends and practices, and try to get a hang of the subject by trying to fit a theory to all that I see around me, especially using modern tools of psychology and yardsticks of other religions, I will end up with a fat book, but that goes nowhere. Because Hinduism is not obliged to fit nicely into a jig saw puzzle, you see, it evolved over >5000 years among now a billion people, all professing only what they loved about life. Yes, about life. 

Delhi smog

I took this photo from 11th floor hotel Fortune Excalibur Gurgaon at 7:07 am

The Black and White party

The political cauldron of India is boiling with possibilities and alliances left and right in the election year 2014. The Prince is worried that all poll surveys show his grand old party may as well raise its hands in defeat. The saffron superman is displaying a wrinkled forehead during his strident speeches claiming to be the future leader of India, the lines looking like the scattered sticks of a marauding broom. The topi-clad smiling assassin of Delhi brandishing the broom is hobnobbing with Aam Aadmis like there is no tomorrow. The so-called third-rate third front is bristling with a total lack of ideas.

What next?

No. 10 Janpath calls an emergency meeting. Whatever they seem to be doing seems to be triggering a pepper spray in its own face. What indeed can be done?

A creative out-of-the-box jack rabbit comes up with an idea. Why not scrap the old party and create a new one? And call it the Black and White party?

Look at the marketing possibility sirji!

The idea is simple. Make India into the world's very first pure black and white nation. That means everyone and everything sports only one or two colours, the favourite white or the even more favourite black.

This idea is so ideally matching the heritage and aspiration of our nation. Let me cite some examples.

Black is the loved colour of accountants. White is the ideal of every Indian mind. White complexion (Fair Prince is shining in white rolled-up sleeves), whitening creams for men and women from all walks of life.

The Indian bride wears black eyeliner (Kareena also promotes white now), black bead necklaces and white lac or shell chudia armlets.

The frugality of a Gandhian weave is in its white. 

A lot of Indian cuisine from black dal makhni to black gram halwa and black til laddus. Not to forget the white rivers and oceans of milk and curd.

The black hair that men and women sport late into wrinkled old age. Just as they in parts of India smear their faces with white powder.

The black money that backs every creative and competitive endeavour in industry and politics.

The shining black sinewy boatmen and fishermen and farmers and street layers and dock workers that can be spotted across the length and breadth of India.

The millions of outsourcing dollar earners who work every dark night to keep the white westerners happy and prosperous.

The frequent blackouts whenever we have power outage.

By eschewing the wasteful  rainbow of colours which are a sheer distraction for our essentially black and white nation, a back of the envelope calculation shows, India will save a trillion dollars.

That's white and not counting the black bigger lot: starting with the savings in paint, print, television and Internet bandwidth. A straight forward increase of GDP by 20 percent.

The cut and dried Indian almanac has the white fortnight and the black one too.

Kalki is the white knight on a white  horse coming as the last saviour for the masses, who comes and cleans up the sullied world.

The black Kali, Krishna and Rama already save the pious and pure souls every day.

The white Shiva sits with his Himalayan consort in the world's whitest longest stretch of mountains.

India, wake up to the future. It's black and white.

Welcome the Black and White party!

"Death" in Bhagavadgita Chapter 1

The first chapter is called the Yoga of Arjuna's Despondency. It is the canvas on which the entire Gita is painted.

The Mahabharata war was perhaps the war to end all wars. It was bigger in its impact on Indian civilisation than the world wars impacted all of us in the 20th century. Almost every king and army in the subcontinent was there fighting for one side or the other, a mega-war between cousins-extremely powerful men who had grown up in rivalry. One side was clearly evil from the beginning, out to destroy their fatherless cousins, the five Pandava brothers constantly busy in fighting for their very survival amidst all the evil machinations. Humiliated, banished to the forest, and then being denied even a small patch of land, the good brothers had to undertake the war to claim their due from their evil cousins.

Interestingly, even the evil ones believe this is a righteous war for them! ( dharmakshetre kurukshetre).

The paradigm of war is predicated on death. Kill or be killed. All those who celebrate war heroes celebrate the human act of inflicting death or dying for a "cause". Man's ideas of a noble cause involve rights and entitlements, and acquisitions. Might is right. Just like how tigers and lions mark territory and kill mercilessly.

The hero of this warmongering attitude is Duryodhana. He says everyone is there to die for him. He demonstrates the ultimate appetite for war, as killing is fully justified for him to achieve his ends - he wants to finish off his cousins and their claims to the kingdom. He seems afraid of only Bheema among the Pandavas, who has sworn to kill him and his 99 brothers for all their evil deeds.

So other's death as a means to one's victory is the key theme in the first chapter. In a simple way, Gita shows us that the way we relate to death is with this attitude of  "Us" versus "Them". As long as "we"can live, by killing "them", it is victory of life over death.

Arjuna has a different definition of  "Us". Note he is not against war, but doesn't want to kill his own brethren, teachers and forefathers. He says this war is sinful and meaningless because it entails killing one's own. Not very different from a warmonger, who wants to kill "them", except that Arjuna has a different definition of "Us".

So essentially, death is depicted in the first chapter as a conscious choice for man to inflict on others for his own ends. It is the ultimate step, when all else fails. So we see death here as a kind of murder.

'Death' in the Bhagavadgita

Long back, when I was still in my teens and my father had turned sixty, I had scandalised him by saying, "there must be a rule to eliminate people over sixty". I really thought old people would be carrying too much baggage, would lose energy and creativity and be a burden to society, as they were simply waiting for their end.

I don't wish to challenge those statements now, even though I am on the other side. But as we grow older, one constant experience is our seeing people die. Death seems to be a ticket counter and we all seem to be in a long queue moving up steadily every second. But then death is something we don't want to see.

My eternal enchantment with Bhagavadgita for its voice, insight, reach, and sympathy for the human condition also involves frequently savouring its mention of death. So I decided to cover the theme of 'Death'  in the Bhagavadgita, chapter by chapter. You can expect in the next eighteen posts what each chapter says in various ways-  some deeply insightful things about death.

Talk to you soon.